Collusion is a crime...

Trump takes up Giuliani's line of attack: Collusion is not a crime

By STEPHANIE MURRAY

President Donald Trump on Tuesday took up his lawyer Rudy Giuliani's line of attack against special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, writing on Twitter that collusion is not a crime.

The president stressed there was no collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia. But even if there was, the president said, collusion does not constitute a crime.

"Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn’t matter because there was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!" the president wrote on Twitter.

The comments are his latest bulwark against a federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which he often calls "rigged" against him and a "witch hunt." And as his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is set to go to trial this week as part of Mueller’s probe, the president is shifting his comments about the investigation.

Trump and his adviser are technically right. There’s no legal statute specifically stating collusion is illegal, according to The Associated Press. But there are laws that could hold water if Mueller finds evidence that Trump's campaign cooperated with the Kremlin. Those charges could include conspiracy, fraud and computer hacking, among others, according to the AP.

One of Trump’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, took to Fox News on Tuesday morning to also repeat Giuliani’s stance on collusion.

"Collusion is not a crime," said Sekulow. "It is not a violation of any rule, statute or regulation that we have seen after reviewing this case for a year. I think Bob Mueller will come to the same conclusion."